It is intriguing how my weekend has been flowing. Yesterday in our home we launched a new 6 week video series from Sojourners dubbed “Justice for the Poor” where we explored “Burger King Mom” that is the hard working single parents in America, those in need and what this means for us as believers.

It brought to the forefront the idea of the cop out most Christians go to that we cannot do anything about the poor from Mark 14 (New King James Version):

The Anointing at Bethany

3 And being in Bethany at the house of Simon the leper, as He sat at the table, a woman came having an alabaster flask of very costly oil of spikenard. Then she broke the flask and poured it on His head. 4 But there were some who were indignant among themselves, and said, “Why was this fragrant oil wasted? 5 For it might have been sold for more than three hundred denarii and given to the poor.” And they criticized her sharply.

6 But Jesus said, “Let her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a good work for Me.7 For you have the poor with you always, and whenever you wish you may do them good; but Me you do not have always.8 She has done what she could. She has come beforehand to anoint My body for burial.9 Assuredly, I say to you, wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what this woman has done will also be told as a memorial to her.”

But it is an adventure in missing the point, for it is not saying that there is nothing we can do and our world will always have poor, that we cannot build heaven here on earth we need to await the coming of Christ…so might as well be the frozen chosen.

NO! what this is saying to us, is that Jesus looks at his crew and goes look we are the poor, the masses, the sick, the healed, the rejected, the outsiders, the working classes, those that don’t fit in… you will always be able to live in community with one another within and out of the Love that is the Holy Mystery of God so do not worry over one act of compassion that looks extravagant.

This flowed into this mornings adult Bible study class on Hospitality, and this idea of sacred duty, for whomever we serve, whomever we enter into community with for short or long term is Christ which then flowed into the sermon, week twelve on the series of the Apostle’s Creed, on the idea of Jesus is ascended and sitting at the right hand of God.

The ancient Roman greeting was “Caesar is Lord” for Christians of the time, they were beyond subversive, radical, transformational in that they stated “Christ is Lord” as there greeting… for it was the claiming of citizenship in Heaven that gave this boldness. So is this an awaiting for death to enter the pearly gates? No, citizenship in Heaven was the idea of an outpost of the Empire. Where Rome used cities such as Phillipi for these outposts of citizens to transform the Empire to the Roman way, each time a Christ-like in the Christianities greeted with “Christ is Lord” they were claiming their lives and communities as outposts for Heaven here on earth. That is transforming Terra-Firma into what God originally intended by being the planted in the midst.

So are the poor always with us? Of course, they are us, we are called into community of life together, a community of life that is called to be a transformational community for those communities we exist in so that each and every person is loved, so the world is healed, so that salvation becomes more than words uttered once but is a constant journey of personal and communal transformation.

This leads to my last thing of the weekend, teaching my ministry team on what it means to Journey With… in the context of Community.